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Abstract
In this paper I use a Foucault-inspired framework to study the function and performance of temporality in the discourse of Palestinian-Israeli politics. I argue that Palestinians are constituted as being without time. They are not with time; not with a past, or a future. Phrased differently, temporality is performed in the discourse of Palestinian-Israeli politics such that Palestinians are denied a position in time, they are only ever of a time, and they are not for time. They have been made to be without time by a long line of peace initiatives, including but not limited to the Oslo agreements (1993-2000) and the Quartet Statement of 2011. The initiatives are ahistorical, their omnipresence makes the Palestinian condition temporary – of a time, and their privileging of Israeli ‘security’ denies Palestinians futurity. By isolating Palestinians from time and controlling their activities with time these performances are complicit in Israel’s regime of dispossession in Palestine.
Notes
1. “Rage Against the Machine Lyrics,” AZLyrics.com, available online at:http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/rageagainstthemachine/testify.html, accessed 5 September 2015.
2. Eyal Weizman (Citation2007) Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation (London: Verso), pp. 31-33.
3. Oren Yiftachel & Haim Yacobi (2005) ‘Barriers, Walls and Dialectics: The Shaping of “Creeping Apartheid” in Israel/Palestine,’ in M. Sorkin (ed) Against the Wall: Israel’s Barrier to Peace (London: The New Press), p. 142.
4. Sean F. McMahon (Citation2010) The Discourse of Palestinian-Israeli Relations: Persistent Analytics and Practices (London: Routledge Press), p. 12.
5. David Campbell (Citation2007) ‘Poststructuralism,’ in T. Dunne, M. Kurki & S. Smith (eds) International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 216.
6. McMahon, The Discourse of Palestinian-Israeli Relations.
7. Sari Hanafi (Citation2005) ‘Spacio-cide and Bio-Politics: The Israeli Colonial Project from 1947 to the Wall,’ in M. Sorkin (ed) Against the Wall: Israel’s Barrier to Peace (London: The New Press), pp. 158-173; Weizman, Hollow Land; and Neve Gordon (Citation2008) Israel’s Occupation (London: University of California Press).
8. Gordon, Israel’s Occupation, p. 24.
9. Weizman, Hollow Land, p. 104.
10. Eyal Weizman (Citation2005) ‘Hollow Land: The Barrier Archipelago and the Impossible Politics of Separation,’ in M. Sorkin (ed) Against the Wall: Israel’s Barrier to Peace (London: The New Press), p. 240.
11. Ariella Azoulay & Adi Ophir (2005) ‘The Monster’s Tail,’ in M. Sorkin (ed) Against the Wall: Israel’s Barrier to Peace (London: The New Press), p. 11.
12. Michel Foucault (Citation1979) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books), pp. 149-156.
13. Ibid, p. 150.
14. Ibid, p. 153.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid, p. 160.
17. Ibid, p. 154.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid, pp. 184-194.
20. Ibid, p. 191.
21. Ibid, p. 152.
22. Michael C. Williams & Keith Krause (1997) ‘Preface: Toward Critical Security Studies,’ in M. Williams & K. Krause (eds), Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases (London: Routledge Press), p. x.
23. R. B. J. Walker (Citation1993) Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. x.
24. Colin Gordon (Citation1991) ‘Governmental Rationality: An Introduction,’ in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon & Peter Miller (eds) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality: with Two Lectures by and an Interview with Michel Foucault (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), p. 19.
25. Ibid, p. 35.
26. Michel Foucault (Citation2007) Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977-1978 (New York: Palgrave), p. 20.
27. Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 62.
28. Ibid, p. 63.
29. The Palestinian-Israeli Peace Agreement: a Documentary Record rev. 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, Citation1994), p. 117.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid, p. 118.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid, p. 122.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid, p. 118.
36. Agreement on Preparatory Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities (29 August 1994), Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations, available online at: http://www.un.int/wcm/content/site/palestine/pid/12475 (accessed 26 September 2014).
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Protocol on Further Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities, 27 August1995, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, available online at: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace%20Process/Guide%20to%20the%20Peace%20Process/Further%20Transfer%20of%20Powers%20and%20Responsibilities (accessed 22 November 2012).
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
47. Jan Busse (Citation2015) Theorizing Governance as Globalized Governmentality: The Dynamics of World-Societal Order in Palestine, Middle East Critique 24(2), pp. 161-189.
48. Israeli-Palestinian Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (28 September 1995) (UN Doc), Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations, available online at: http://www.un.int/wcm/content/site/palestine/pid/12474 (accessed 26 September 2014).
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid.
61. Naseer H. Aruri (Citation1995) Early Empowerment: The Burden Not the Responsibility, Journal of Palestine Studies 24(2), p. 38.
62. The admittedly unwieldy acronym of ‘DOPOISGA’ is used throughout to subvert the discourse of Palestinian-Israeli relations. It is a conscious violation of the discursive rule of formation that requires an author, in order to make a truthful statement, to assume that Israel would permit the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state in mandate Palestine. The agreement usually is referred to as the ‘DOP.’ This discursive performance silences the fact that the agreement was only about realizing Interim Self-Governing Arrangements for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; it made no mention whatsoever of a sovereign Palestinian state. My deployment of ‘DOPOISGA’ is a conscious articulating of what the discourse silences.
63. McMahon, The Discourse of Palestinian-Israeli Relations, p. 124.
64. Doc. C. U.S. Department of State (2003) ‘A Performance-Based Road Map to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,’ Washington, 30 April 2003, Journal of Palestine Studies 32(4), pp. 88-89.
65. Ibid, p. 89.
66. Ibid, p. 92.
67. Ibid, p. 91.
68. Ibid, p. 89.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid.
71. Ibid, p. 92.
72. Ibid, p. 89.
73. Ibid, p. 90.
74. Ibid, p. 93.
75. Sean F. McMahon (Citation2011) ‘Post-Oslo Peace Initiatives and the Discourse of Palestinian-Israeli Relations,’ UNISCI – Unidada de Investigacion Sobre Seguridad Y Cooperacion Internacional – Discussion Papers, 26, p. 44. Available at: http://www.ucm.es/info/unisci/revistas/UNISCI_DP_26_McMAHON.pdf (accessed 22 September 2015).
76. Doc. C. U.S. Department of State, ‘A Performance-Based Road Map to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,’ Washington, 30 April 2003, p. 90.
77. Ibid, 94.
78. Statement by Middle East Quartet, United Nations Secretary-General – 20 August 2010, http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2010/sg2161.doc.htm (accessed 26 September 2014).
79. Michele K. Esposito (Citation2011) Quarterly Update on Conflict and Diplomacy, Journal of Palestine Studies 40(2), p. 120.
80. Ibid, pp. 121-122.
81. Ibid, p. 122.
82. Ibid, p. 131.
83. Nicholas Guyatt (Citation1998) The Absence of Peace: Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (New York: Zed Books), p. 67.
84. Joseph A. Massad (Citation2007) The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians (London: Routledge Press), p. 85. Emphasis in the original.
85. Esposito, ‘Quarterly Update on Conflict and Diplomacy,’ p. 123.
86. Ibid.
87. Ibid, p. 121.
88. Doc. A2. Middle East Quartet (Citation2011) Statement Urging the Resumption of Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks, New York, in Journal of Palestine Studies (2012), 41(2), p. 204.
89. Ibid.
90. Ibid.
91. Ibid, p. 205.
92. Ibid.